A history of the Amiga, part 5: postlaunch blues

Part five of our series on the history of the Amiga covers the computer's …

Bad advertising

Because the Amiga was years ahead of its time compared to the competition, many Commodore executives believed that the computer would sell itself. This was not—and has never been—true of any technology. When personal computers first came on the scene in the late 1970s, most people had no idea what they would be useful for. As a result, the only people who bought them initially were enthusiastic and technically skilled hobbyists—a limited market at best. It took a few killer applications, such as the spreadsheet, combined with an all-out marketing assault, to drive sales to new levels.

The Amiga was in the same position in 1985. It was a multimedia computer before the term had been invented, but there were no killer applications yet. What it needed was a stellar advertising campaign, one that would drive enough sales to get software companies interested in supporting the new platform. Instead, what it got was a half-hearted series of television ads that ran over Christmas and were never seen again. The first commercial had a bunch of zombie-like people shuffling up stairs towards a pedestal, from which a computer monitor emanated a blinding light. It was a poor copy of Apple's famous 1984 advertisement, and failed to generate even a tiny amount of buzz in the industry.

An Amiga ad from November 1985
Image courtesy Amiga History Guide

From there, things got worse. The next ad was a rip-off of the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey and featured an old man turning into a fetus. Some pictures of the commercial's production made their way to the Commodore engineers, and soon the "fetus on a stick" became a standard joke about their company's marketing efforts.

Further advertising used black-and-white and sepia-toned footage of typical family home movies, with some vague narration: "When you were growing up, you learned you faced a world full of competition." Amiga did indeed face a world full of competition, but this kind of lifestyle avant-garde advertising was already being done—and being done much better—by Apple.

What Commodore really needed at that time was some simple comparative advertising. A picture of an IBM PC running in text mode on a green monochrome screen, then a Macintosh with its tiny 9-inch monochrome monitor, then the Amiga with full color, multitasking, animation, and sound. For extra marks, you could even put prices under all three.

An Amiga ad from an alternate history

As a result of Commodore dropping the ball on production and marketing, the firm sold only 35,000 Amigas in 1985. This didn't help with the balance sheet, which was getting grim.

Missing CES

Commodore had experienced a financial crunch at the worst possible time. In the six quarters between September 1984 and March 1986, Commodore Business Machines International lost over $300 million. Money was tight, and the bean-counters were in charge.

As a result, Commodore was a no-show for the January 1986 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Ahoy! Magazine reflected on this conspicuous absence:

Understand that the last four CES shows in a row, dating back to January 1984, Commodore's exhibit had been the focal point of the home computer segment of CES, the most visited computer booth at the show—as befitted the industry's leading hardware manufacturer. Their pulling out of CES seemed like Russia resigning from the Soviet Bloc.

Commodore also missed the following computer dealer exhibition, COMDEX, as well as the June 1986 CES. The company had defaulted on its bank loans and could not get the bankers to lend any more money for trade shows.

The company's advertising also slowed to a trickle. Thomas Rattigan, who was being groomed for the position as Commodore's CEO, recalled those troubling times. "Basically, the company was living hand to mouth," he said. "When I was there, they weren't doing very much advertising because they couldn't afford it."

This strategic retreat from the market had a hugely negative impact on Amiga sales. In February 1986, Commodore revealed that it was moving between 10,000 and 15,000 Amiga 1000 computers a month. Jack Tramiel's Atari ST was beating the Amiga in sales figures, in signing up dealers, and worse still, in application support.